After 94 years, San Jose’s oldest restaurant, Wing’s Chinese, may have closed for good - The Mercury News

• wing's restaurant 1933 -- SLUG: wing1 PHOTO DATE: 1933 SCAN DATE: 2/2/01 CREDIT: na

• wing's restaurant, 1943 -- SLUG: wing2 PHOTO DATE: 1943 SCAN DATE: 2/2/01 CREDIT: na

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• wing's restaurant, 1950s -- SLUG: wing3 PHOTO DATE: 1950 SCAN DATE: 2/2/01 CREDIT: na

• Wing's, since 1925, is a funky upstairs cafe serving good Mandarin and Szechuan dishes. There is nothing nouveau about Wing's. Old booths with plastic bead-curtains. Owner Louis Wang will prepare a dish for detail shot. At left is David Wang, in the middle is his wife, Anne Wang, and at right is Louis Wang.

• On Wednesday, June 7, 2017, the proprietors of Wing's posted this notice on the front door advising customers that the restaurant will close at the end of the month. Wing's is the oldest full-service restaurant in San Jose. The owners announced on Monday, June 26, 2017 they have reached an agreement to remain open and will return to business by the end of the week. (Jason Green / Bay Area News Group).

• The iconic Wing's neon sign is pictured unlit on June 7, 2017. Wing's opened in 1925 and is the oldest full-service restaurant in San Jose. (Jason Green / Bay Area News Group).

The neon wings may stop flapping for good in San Jose’s Japantown.

Wing’s, the city’s oldest full-service restaurant, marked by that historic sign, has quietly closed its doors.

“It’s very sad,” building owner Louis Wang said Monday. “After 94 years, last night will probably be the last night of operation” as a restaurant.

He said Ashley Wu and family, who ran the Jackson Street restaurant, decided not to give advance notice of the shutdown so as to avoid the crowds that overwhelmed the place in 2017, when there was a short shutdown before a new lease was signed.

“It’s a great location,” Wang said, “but the building is very old.”

Estimates for bringing the 1925 building up to current standards range from $140,000 for ADA work to $500,000 to $600,000 for a full remodeling, he said.

“Right now, at this point, I don’t have anyone willing to pay that.”

Over the years, customers have spoken wistfully of the frozen-in-time setting that would be lost if the restaurant shuttered. One wrote on Yelp: “From the beaded curtains for the booths to the flocked velvet wallpaper and push buttons to ring for service from the privacy of your booth, no other restaurant I’ve been in would work as well as a film noir set.”

Wing’s did play a role in a movie, but it wasn’t back in the film noir era. Scenes from a 1992 B-movie called “College Kickboxers: Trained to Fight” were set here.

Wing’s has been owned by just a handful of families over the years. According to Mercury News archives, Wing’s opened in 1925 and was run for 25 years by Wing Chen. Then the Wing’s baton passed to Henry Wong, who sold it in 1976 to brothers Louis and David Wang. They operated the restaurant for decades and, according to city property records, David Wang is the current owner of the building.

Although Wing’s is the oldest full-service restaurant in San Jose, the Chiaramonte deli and sausage shop is older. That store dates to 1908.

Wu told KCBS that she hopes to find another location nearby where she can operate a restaurant. She called the decision to close bittersweet and opted to tell only longtime customers and friends about Sunday’s last day of service.

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https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/02/25/after-94-years-wings-chinese-in-san-jose-may-have-closed-for-good/ 2019-02-25 18:12:00Z